Aberdeenshire engineering firm Power Jacks has strengthened its management team to meet growing global demand from the oil and gas sector.

The company, based in Ellon, makes specialist industrial lifting and positioning equipment and has reported “record” annual growth for the 2013 year, up 175 per cent to £13.1 million.

Keith Mackie joins the company from Cosalt Offshore, taking up a newly-created role of deputy managing director.

Formerly operations director at Cosalt, Mackie was responsible for scheduling, management and delivery of operations.

Ian Porter joins the company as operations director from GE, where he spend 22 years of his career in manufacturing executive positions within GE Oil & Gas, GE Energy and GE Aviation.

Bruce Bultitude, chairman and managing director at Power Jacks, said: “To attract two high-calibre people as Keith and Ian to Power Jacks is a significant endorsement of the business success and key to our plans for continued growth.

“The company invested £6 million in a state-of-the-art, purpose-built manufacturing facility at Ellon and within three years, we are already starting to reap the rewards with plans to more than double again over the next three to five years.

“We are expanding across a number of industries with a particular focus on the subsea and topside sectors of the oil & gas industry where we are experiencing a sharp increase in activity for our core electro-mechanical products.

“There would appear to be a step-change in the industry to move away from hydraulic to electro-mechanical solutions which can offer safer, maintenance free and more environmentally-friendly solutions for lifting and positioning of high loads.

“Strengthening our management team is a key part of our strategy for sustained growth with Keith and Ian each having a key role to play in further driving forward our international business operations.

“Together, they have an impressive track record in operational experience in oil & gas services which, combined, spans more than 60 years.”